Community speaks against ‘white supremacist’ bill protecting Confederate monuments
“This is a racist bill, [and] anyone who votes in support of this is voting in support of white supremacy,” Stark said.
Photo courtesy of W.V. Legislature
By DOUGLAS J HARDING
Each of the 19 community members who spoke during Wednesday’s public hearing about the Monument and Memorial Protection Act did so in opposition to the bill, which they said stands to preserve the legacies of racism and white supremacy across the state.
“If this bill passes into law, it will say a lot about West Virginia,” said Rebekah Aranda, a member of WV’s National Organization for Women chapter. “It will speak to the people who live here who will feel even more like outsiders. It will speak to those who would otherwise move here, but instead decline, knowing that this state does not welcome them.”
The bill, HB 2174, prohibits “relocation, removal, alteration, renaming, rededication, or other disturbance of any statue, monument, memorial, nameplate, or plaque which is located on public property,” including such monuments which honor Confederate soldiers and generals.
Only one state legislator, Del. Brandon Steele (R - Raleigh, 29), attended Wednesday’s public hearing.
Per WV Metro News, the House Government Organization Committee passed the bill Monday afternoon after Democrats on the committee attempted twice, but failed, to remove from the bill protections for Civil War monuments, such as the statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson which stands currently on the state Capitol Complex.
“Make no mistake, the memorials this bill is designed to protect were not created to mark history. They were created to make a statement against equality during major racial justice movements in our country,” Aranda said. “Just as the people who erected those statues and monuments knew what statement they were making then, the legislators who drafted and vote for this bill should clearly understand that they are not protecting West Virginia history—They are making a statement about West Virginia history and promoting a future that is not inclusive of the West Virginia we want to be.”
James Cochran, who spoke on behalf of more than 400 members of West Virginians Against Confederate Commemoration, encouraged lawmakers to ask themselves whether HB 2174 will, “…do anything to help average West Virginians.”
“If not, I would recommend you not vote for it,” Cochran said.
West Virginians Against Confederate Commemoration recently led the movement which resulted in garnering more than 10,000 signatures on a petition to remove the Stonewall Jackson statue from the Capitol Complex—but the statue remains.
Last year, the group also supported the initiative that led to the Kanawha County Board of Education’s vote to change the name of Stonewall Jackson Middle School in Charleston—where 42% of students, the highest percentage in the state, are black—to West Side Middle School.
“That process and that name change were very meaningful for those students and would have been made much more difficult had this bill been in place,” Cochran said.
Cochran also said the bill represents an overextension of government power and an attempt at capitalizing on political divisions without actually helping residents of the state.
“This bill is a perfect example of symbolic culture war politics combined with government overreach, and [it] is completely unnecessary,” Cochran said. “I just don’t feel like the state needs to exercise that kind of control if local government entities or other organizations across the state are interested in making those kind of name changes.”
President of the W.V. NAACP, Owens Brown, said the bill serves to promote racism while presenting an inaccurate view of the state’s most defining moments in history.
“Many of the monuments were erected […] to promote white supremacy,” Brown said. “The Confederate Army and Gen. Stonewall Jackson are not part of West Virginia’s military history. They were traitors and white supremacists who fought against the Union and to keep black people enslaved. We should not be honoring people who committed treason and fought to maintain slavery in the United States.”
Brown said West Virginia chose the right side of history during the Civil War, and lawmakers’ votes on HB 2174 will determine whether it will do the same now.
“The Protection of Monuments and Memorials Act is just a cloak to cover these symbols of white supremacy,” he said. “West Virginia was on the right side in the Civil War fighting against treason and slavery. [This] act is a step backwards and places the state and the people of West Virginia on the wrong side of history. This bill will only reinforce the negative perception in the eyes of many people across the nation that West Virginia is a backwards and racist state.”
Legal director of the W.V. chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Loree Stark, said that if the bill passes, it will signal to people inside and outside the state that W.V. welcomes racism.
“This is a racist bill, [and] anyone who votes in support of this is voting in support of white supremacy,” Stark said. “The passage of this bill will send a message to West Virginians that racism is not only welcome but is sanctioned here. Racism is alive and thriving in this country and in West Virginia. You have a very real opportunity to say emphatically that you are on the other side. I urge you to vote no on this bill.”
Policy director of the ACLU-WV, Eli Baumwell, addressed a common misconception that removing Confederate monuments from state grounds is an attempt by activists to erase uncomfortable parts of the state’s history.
“History can be taught in museums, [and] it can and should be taught in schools—even the divisive parts,” Baumwell said. “But these monuments are not historical markers. They are markers of honor. We should not be bound to honor today those who our ancestors honored, nor should we bind future generations to honor those who we honor.”
Baumwell said the removal of Confederate monuments from state grounds seems like a bare-minimum initiative if the state government actually supports equality.
“As we as a country still grapple with the legacy of slavery and white supremacy and its real and lasting impact on institutions today, it seems the lowest of low-hanging fruit would be to stop honoring that legacy,” Baumwell said.
Charleston resident Howard Swint said the intentions of the groups responsible for erecting Confederate monuments throughout the south reveal the true purposes of their existence.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy, he said, manipulated legislators for decades after the Civil War, encouraging them to promote white supremacy in various aspects of their politics and governing.
The Daughters, he said, began more than a century ago leading popular rallies across the country aimed at enforcing racist discrimination in the form of Jim Crow laws as well as in opposition to the Civil Rights Act and eventual public school desegregation.
“In West Virginia, it didn’t matter to lawmakers then that Stonewall Jackson was a slave-owner who trafficked small children separated from their families, or that he betrayed his oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution or that he even took up arms on the battlefield and slaughtered tens of thousands of loyalist Union soldiers,” Swint said. “In fact, it didn’t even matter that he was actually opposed to West Virginia statehood or that he profoundly twisted Christianity to use it to yoke around the slave community of Lexington, Virginia by invoking the fear of God Almighty to enforce slave obedience. No, West Virginia lawmakers then cared only that it was politically expedient for them [and] that they stood to benefit from the perpetuation of racial discrimination with the white voters in their districts.”
Swint ended his allotted two-minute speaking time during the public hearing to pose a question to legislators who may vote in support of HB 2174.
“I ask the supporters of the legislation today: Do you, too, stand to benefit in your own way with your own constituency? Does this play with your base?” Swint said. “If so, then let it be known that you stand shoulder-to-shoulder with hardened white supremacists who organize for personal gain their un-Christian and un-American causes and that your vote will actually advance these same dark causes into the 21st Century—never mind how your vote will most assuredly hurt West Virginia’s standing in the eyes of the nation, how it will reinforce the perception of a backward people who, despite living in a Union state, have found cause to protect Confederate monuments on state grounds.”
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